Thursday, 3 November 2011

It'll never catch on…

(No, not my former opinion of Twitter). So said the Manchester Guardian when faced with a new medium. 'No good will come of it', he said - he must be spinning in his grave every time a Guardian journalist types yet another breathless paean of praise to The Wire and The Killing. It would destroy the social fabric, said others - people would retreat to their individual homes rather than congregate gregariously.

Here's the song commissioned for the first UK public demonstration of television in 1936. 10,000 homes got TV before service was suspended for the duration of the war.